A Bit of Progress

[ron]

Now that's what I call a clamp ;D


The piece of shaped wood behind the former is what I used as a dolly to form the wrapper sheet.



I did the firebox wrapper using a petrol camping stove to anneal it and it went surprisingly easy, but I needed my pal with his big propane burner to open out the barrel, couldn't get enough heat with the stove. Hopefully I'll make a start to the former for it this afternoon.
The sheet of copper for the wrapper was exactly the right length as supplied by Reeves and only needed about 1/16" trimmed off the width so there isn't much room for error.
Ron

[baggo]

Are you sure you haven't done this before Ron At this rate you'll be in steam before Xmas ;D

John

[ron]

Hi John
No, I'm a virgin coppersmith, however I'm finding it quite interesting, nice to try something new for a change.
I do have the big advantage of a pal who has experience of doing it in the past and although I'm doing the work his advice is invaluable, plus he's got a BIG propane burner and oxy/acetyline.
It can be surprisingly time consuming, it took me nearly a full afternoon to drill, ream and bore the holes in the tubeplate, although forming the wrapper only took about half an hour.
Hopefully the pictures will be a help to anyone starting out, there are plenty of books on the subject, but their pictures tend to be poor quality B&W ones [or at least the ones I've read are!]
Ron

[Steve M. W]

Now then when I read up on how to go about flanging my boiler plates for my Simplex and after speaking to other people who had built boilers, no article or person said anything about pickling after each manipulating (bashing) session so I haven’t.
I was however warned that the copper will work harden as you shape it and that to carry on without re-annealing it will result in cracks, this I was careful not to do and found that you could hear the metal hardening as you worked it so it was easy to know when to re-anneal.
Your comments please.

Just as an aside many years ago I was advised by an experienced engineer listen to the metal it will tell you if something is wrong and I have found this to be true in all aspects of machining and metal bashing.

Steve

[John Lee]

sw said:

Now then when I read up on how to go about flanging my boiler plates for my Simplex and after speaking to other people who had built boilers, no article or person said anything about pickling after each manipulating (bashing) session so I haven’t.
I was however warned that the copper will work harden as you shape it and that to carry on without re-annealing it will result in cracks, this I was careful not to do and found that you could hear the metal hardening as you worked it so it was easy to know when to re-anneal.
Your comments please.

Just as an aside many years ago I was advised by an experienced engineer listen to the metal it will tell you if something is wrong and I have found this to be true in all aspects of machining and metal bashing.

Steve

Many years ago (and in a different life.. ) I was an Artificer Apprentice in the Navy. One of the training exercises was to make a copper drill container using an old penny at one end (yes; they defaced the Queen's currency) with two sliding tubular parts..sort of like a modern plastic container for big end mills.

We were taught that with copper, as you bash it round, if your last hit did'nt move the copper "quite" as far... get it in the heat again. You can't hear it if you use the proper tools (well the Cornish instructor opinion, a wooden or hide mallet) but you can feel it you use a consistent whack.

After all that though, I buy (nasty word) my boilers. My admiration for those that have the skill and confidence to make it themselves.

p.s. Why would you pickle it after each annealing? It's only cosmetic scale. You only need to pickle before silver soldering it up

[ron]

A couple more photos;





I've hit the first snag, the throatplate is wrong, either it has been made the wrong shape in error or it's for a different boiler, it's about at least 1/2" too short, I've looked at Baggos picture and his looks the right shape.
Here's a picture of it on the drawing.

Ron

[baggo]

Hi Ron,

That's definitely too short, probably by at least an inch! Mine is 5-5/16" deep from the centrepop (boiler centre line). As you say, it's possibly for another boiler.

John

PS looks like what they've done is made it the same depth as the backhead

[ron]

Hi John
Yes, it's exactly the same as the backhead, I'll give Reeves a ring on Monday, thought it was going too well

Ron

[ron]

Reeves supplied me with the correct throatplate and a credit note for the postage, so I'm back in business.
Ron